Her Nature
by Charshee
Summary: Elizabeth can't change who she is, so every now and again she stops trying. *Set 4 years after AWE, this is currently a oneshot, but I may add more! Contains sparrowbeth.*
1. Chapter 1

He was just a pirate.

Elizabeth swept her hair behind her shoulder, tilting her head as the candlelight reflected off the hefty ruby she held, scattering across her face. She met her reflection's eyes in the mirror, imagining a crooked smile and dark eyes smouldering into her own instead.

The home had been purchased with the last loot he'd delivered to her, that and the gifts she finds on the sea shore from Will. The collection of rubies had been significantly bigger when he'd found it, but he was a pirate, after all. In the nursery her son sleeps soundly, four years old now and her most precious possession. The nurse would take good care of him, and she'd explained she must travel to the child the day before. Her invention of a sick relative had been vague, and she'd felt a little guilt lying to his innocent face.

Her fingers splayed over the contents of the false-bottom drawer, caressing the mementos of her life as an outlaw. Her fingers linger on a short, simple knife with a blunt and still-dirty blade. Somewhere in the house she swears she hears a muffled thumping. Despite this and the resulting pang in her chest, the next thing she picks up is a compass.

* * *

Brambles grabbed at her skirts, tugging and urging her to return to the big empty house on the coast, to return to the solid ground and lonely road a widow must walk. Before she can turn back, however, the sea air hits her in a rush of yearning and brine. Nothing could drag her back now, freedom beckoned her, whispered promises on the wind.

Her sturdy leather boots sunk into the sand upon meeting it, and she fought the urge to run. The compass lead her through the dunes, and the sea got louder through the darkness, until finally she rounded a dune to see the orange light of a grimy lantern hanging from the stern of a small row boat. The man beside the boat held two bottles that glowed amber with the lantern light shining through them.

"Lizzie." He grinned at her angelic face, handing her a bottle and touching his freed hand to her cheek.

"Don't you mean "your majesty", Captain?" She said, knocking back a swig of the burning stuff as if she'd never been away.

"Where to, your majesty?" He says, pulling her close enough to brush their lips together and start a fire in her belly.

"Anywhere," she took in a deep breath of ocean air, "take me to sea, Captain." She hitches her skirt up, nothing like a Lady of her breeding, and clambers into the little dingy. Jack shoved the boat down the sand, and hopped in to grab the oars when the water hit his thighs.

Elizabeth smiles at the inky sky, scattered with more stars than she could count in her lifetime. The entire ocean is her own, she is the King of all this great wildness. For a moment she is not a widow, nor a mother, nor a lady; she is just a pirate, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

"You're a good man, Jack." Her voice echoed in his memory as he watched her rearrange her graceful limbs into a more comfortable position.

If only she knew. If only she'd seen what being a good man could cost you. He was pondering their past after plundering her body, having pulled his trousers back on and wrapped her in his shirt so they could converse.

Stretched out on his bunk, gracing the dusty cabin with the gleam of lantern light on her skin, the noblewoman looked at home on the dusty velvet, draped in his least offensive of cotton shirts. She bounced her foot back and forth in the air, to the rhythm of some tune he could not hear.

"How is Will?" She asks of her Husband, who she hasn't seen for five long years now, and who the Pirate set out to find after their last encounter.

"Strange, powerful, needs a shave." The captain smirked, and she kicked out at him from the bunk, which he sidestepped to lean in and capture her exquisite mouth in a rum flavoured kiss. "He misses you, dearly."

"I miss him too." She sighs, as the pirate lays himself beside her, hooking his fingertips into the neckline of the shirt he pulled it down and pressed his lips to the base of her neck.

"Come with me, come find him." Jack whispered, stroking the soft hair that began her hairline and watching her dark eyes close to his words.

"And leave my child? And be with the two of you, together?"

"Liz, love, it's hardly proper for a lady of your station to suggest such things but if you were to insist-"

"Jack." She shuts him up with that sad tone. She's distant and empty, she's a siren left to dry out on land, it's a curse and a shame watching his Lizzie fade away.

"You could bring the boy?" It's a stale suggestion, he knows the answer before he's asked.

"Never. I'd never let him see his father like that, and I'd never put him in danger's way like that."

"You can't stay inland forever, love."

"Why not?"

"It's not in your nature."

Jack had seen enough of this world to know that there wasn't a woman alive who didn't share some blood with Calypso. He knew one taste of the wild brine of the sea spray on her face and she'd hear a call that would never quiet, a craving that couldn't be silenced until there were fathoms beneath her feet.

She doesn't argue, she knows he's right. Still, they have right now, they have tonight, and she's not nearly tired yet. She wraps her fingers around the back of his neck, pushing her fingers into his tangled hair and pulling his face closer to her own.

"Kiss me, Jack, help me forget."

He obliges, happily, and they move with the rocking of the ship, with the endless assault of the waves on the shore, with the tide pulling them farther and father out to sea.


End file.
